Over the years, Resident Evil shifted gradually from its survival-horror roots towards its current action-oriented gameplay. Resident Evil: Revelations producer Masachika Kawata explained the - purely financial - reasons behind the change.
"RE4 started in that direction, and RE5 kept going in that direction," he said. "And I think that especially for the North American market, we need to keep going in that direction, and take that a step further. And that's exactly one of the reasons that Revelations is the way it is."
Kawata admitted that a lot of the series' fans love to see it return to its "good old days" of survival-horror, but he explained that their number is not as large as action fans.
"Looking at the marketing data [for survival horror games] ... the market is small, compared to the number of units Call of Duty and all those action games sell," he explained. "A 'survival horror' Resident Evil doesn't seem like it'd be able to sell those kinds of numbers."